C.W. NEVIUS -- Raiders Play To Moon's Strength

Published 4:00 am, Monday, October 27, 1997

1997-10-27 04:00:00 PDT Seattle -- RAIDERS FANS might have been discouraged after watching their team drop a 45-34 decision to Seattle yesterday. Obviously, they do not realize nuances of strategy. According to head coach Joe Bugel, everything worked out to perfection.

"The thing we were going to try to do," Bugel said in his post-game interview, "was to stop the run and force (Warren) Moon to pass."

Seriously. That's what he said. Seattle coach Dennis Erickson, boarding the elevator after leaving the locker room, was told that was Bugel's plan. "Yeah," Erickson said, thinking it was a joke. "Right."

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Nope, that was really the idea. The thinking was that the Seahawks had been running the ball well -- sixth in the AFC -- and Moon had thrown more interceptions than touchdowns coming in.

OK, it sounded a lot more logical before Moon riddled the Raiders for 409 yards and five touchdowns.

"Hey, he's Warren Moon," said Seattle wide receiver Mike Pritchard, one of nine players who caught a pass. "What more do you have to say?"

Oh, maybe that it would have been nice to put him on his back at least once. Or that it might not have been a great time to break in a new cornerback, Perry Carter, against a 40-year-old quarterback who reads defenses like most people read the Sunday funnies.

"Yeah," said Pritchard. "What happened to (former All-Pro) cornerback Terry McDaniel? I wondered why he didn't play. You'd think you would want a guy like that in there."

Naw. Just another one of those Raider pregame brainstorms. Bugel decided to bench McDaniel, playing him as an extra defensive back, and handing Carter the assignment of chasing down game-breaking receiver Joey Galloway, who finished with seven receptions for 117 yards and three touchdowns.

"This is the NFL," said Carter, sitting in front of his locker afterward. "No matter which team you play, it's going to have its share of good players."

And how would he grade himself?

"Not good," Carter said. "I know I could have done a lot better."

But why bury the kid, who had only started two games in his career? There was plenty of blame to go around. The Raiders came to Seattle on the cusp of credibility after their stunning win over the Denver Broncos.

And for about three quarters yesterday, it looked like the whole season was going to turn 180 degrees. Even the Seahawks were starting to feel the Raiders' momentum.

"For the first half or so (when the Raiders were up 31-18)," said Seattle centerKevin Mawae, "the guys were wondering whether we were in Seattle or Oakland. There were a lot of California fans here. But in the third or fourth quarter they all jumped over to our side of the fence."

That was about the time that Moon began to put scorch marks all over the Raiders' defense. He threw for 157 yards and two touchdowns in the first half, but it turned out that he was only warming up. Of the 20 passes he threw in the second half, 16 were completions for 247 yards.

He was reading the Raiders as if he had been in their defensive huddle.

"Some of it was almost like sandlot," said Pritchard. "I know one of the long ones he threw to Galloway wasn't called like that. He just told him if the guy was up on him to run a fade and he'd hit him."

The problem is, as Mawae says, "if you give Warren time, he is going to cut a defense up."

The Raiders gave him all the time he needed. They tried blitzing, they tried zone coverage and they tried telling him that he was too old to be on the field. None of it worked.

We can second-guess the decision to play Carter as long as you would like. But what would be a better topic of discussion is the what-you-see-is-what-you-get defensive scheme by the Raiders. The Seahawks seemed to know exactly what was coming.

"We blitzed and dogged a lot," said cornerback Albert Lewis. "But it seemed like they knew us to a tee. They knew our zones and they picked up our blitzes. We were just not doing much to disguise what we were doing."

Evidently not.

"The Raiders have pretty much always been that way," said Pritchard. "If they show blitz, that's what they are going to do. If they show man (coverage) that's what they are doing."

Looking back on it, that's the kind of thing that plays right into the wheelhouse of a wily old veteran like Warren Moon. As Lewis said, it isn't like this is the first time he's gone off on a team.

"I was on the Chiefs when he threw for 500 and some yards against us," Lewis said. "Of course, that was the run and shoot."

This wasn't, it just looked like it. Still, the Raiders did shut down the running game and forced Moon to pass.